


The Light Behind Your Eyes

by hopeless_eccentric



Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [19]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon Non-Binary Character, Communication, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Nonbinary Juno Steel, Other, Whump, essentially juno gets re-theia'd and they have to deal with that, everyone gets whumped in this. nobody is safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:15:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27238660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: A blinking blue light hovered above Nureyev, its fangs deep within a scarred and heaving chest he knew all too well. Its cyan was familiar, the same shade as blasters and fake blue skies. Nureyev might have been able to appreciate the hue if its captive wasn’t pressing a knife into his throat.Free commission for inkedinserendipity on tumblr!!
Relationships: Peter Nureyev & Rita, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921492
Comments: 157
Kudos: 196





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkedinserendipity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkedinserendipity/gifts).



> Hey all!! This one's a bit heavier but there's a happy ending i swear!!
> 
> Content warnings for betrayal, mind control, fighting, nightmares mention, broken bones, self-destructive behavior, minor gore, nausea mention, injury, blood, restraints, animal injury mention (in figurative language),

A blinking blue light hovered above Nureyev, its fangs deep within a scarred and heaving chest he knew all too well. Its cyan was familiar, the same shade as blasters and fake blue skies. Nureyev might have been able to appreciate the hue if its captive wasn’t pressing a knife into his throat.

“Juno,” he choked out, careful to keep his words soft and his carotid intact. As a result, they almost sounded sweet, even if they were sputtered in fear rather than adoration.

Nureyev thought this would be a night like any other, perhaps crashing into bed after a movie night or dragging one another back into the sheets depending on who was more nervous about the upcoming heist. Usually, he was the one who had to be pried away from his spare blueprints and the notebook he used to study, though the upcoming destruction of the THEIA Soul factory had made Juno nervous in a way Nureyev had never seen before.

He had decided it kinder not to ask about such things, as Juno clammed up at meetings, his tongue dulled and a novel’s worth of hurt only expressed when he took Nureyev’s hand in his own and squeezed until his knuckles turned white.

Whatever relationship Juno had with the THEIA Soul was one he intended to keep private. Even if Nureyev had heard the name spoken as many times in nightmares as he had in their family meetings, Juno had made a point of keeping that avenue of the past firmly locked behind him. 

Peter had elected not to ask about such things until Juno was explicitly ready to have that conversation. He almost wished he had pressed when one such THEIA Soul blinked red and Juno shuddered, as if seized by a physical shock. He almost wished he had mentioned something when he thought he saw a bug land on Juno’s coat during their casing of the factory. He wished most of all that he recognized the glint behind his partner’s eye.

“Shut up,” Juno shot back, the blade inching a little closer.

“Darling—” Nureyev tried to protest.

“It hurts when you talk, so just shut the hell up!” Juno snapped again, teeth bared in a predatory snarl.

“What hurts, my love?” Nureyev continued, watching carefully as Juno twitched in response. He seemed to wait until the pet name fell from his lips, entirely by accident, before gritting his teeth against the newly red light of the Soul. “Dear?”

That was enough to get Juno to lean backwards. Even his confusion looked different. As remarkable as his resemblance was to Juno Steel, something remained slightly off the entire time. He waited longer before speaking, words coming out slower and longer and more pronounced. If he spoke with a cadence that was not his own, he moved with one as well, for his recoiling was calculated and even, like a dancer trying to emulate an emotion with only the lines of their body.

“I know you,” Juno breathed, then shook his head, as if trying to fling away the thought by force. “It won’t let me, but I know you.”

Nureyev hoped the shattering of his own heart was a loud enough distraction to keep Juno, or Not-Juno, or whoever had dared walk in Juno Steel’s skin and pretend to hold a candle to the goddess he had replaced, occupied. 

The confusion made the light in his chest sear bright, threatening to temporarily blind Peter. However, he had already squeezed his eyes shut before he had the chance to seize this person around the wrist, for he knew if he looked, he would have never been able to live with himself.

Juno mumbled something that included the word “activated,” as dark and dangerous as the growl of a storm. However, he could do little more than buck against Peter’s insistent grasp.

“You stay right there,” Nureyev choked out as he fought Juno down onto the bed, wary of his legs, even with his wrists pinned.

“I don’t care if it breaks,” Juno snapped to nobody in particular. “You said he killed people, right?”

“Juno—” Nureyev started to sputter, words cut off entirely when Juno seemed to settle on a focused glare.

Something snapped beneath his grasp and he lurched backwards, hands traitorously sympathetic to the crunching injury he had just felt from beneath them. The last time their fingers had brushed, it had been a private little squeeze between accomplices on the way into the THEIA factory. Bile rose in his throat at the thought of those same hands, one flying towards his neck and the other limp and twisted with a pain Juno didn’t seem to feel.

Nureyev dodged before the imposter’s hand could grace the air near him. He tried to swerve around towards a dresser on which he might find a blaster with a stun setting, but it seemed Juno’s knowledge of the terrain hadn’t dissipated with the appearance of the cruel, blinking light of his puppetmaster. Juno caught him by the shoulder and cast him to the ground.

Peter choked out a heaving breath, trying to pretend his lungs weren’t screaming and his head wasn’t reeling and his greatest wish wasn’t to take Juno by the front of the white sleepshirt through which the THEIA Soul blinked and beg for his return. As much as the moment on the floor, back curled uncomfortably against the foot of the bed and hands twitching in search of a blade he did not have, allowed him to process that, it also allowed him to see Juno rummaging through a drawer.

Nureyev managed his way back to his feet by the time he saw the knife.

“You bastard,” he breathed.

“It’s for the greater good, thief,” Juno returned flatly, the beat of his words just barely off. It felt as if he picked and chose them one by one, rather than in coherent sentences.

“Are you going to kill me, my love?” Nureyev pressed, heart skipping a hopeful beat at the thought that the pet name might buy him some more time.

“Quit that,” Juno snapped. Nureyev felt something in his chest tug when he almost sounded like himself again. “Whatever you’re saying that it won’t let me hear.”

Nureyev continued to back away, mind on the blaster behind him and just how to grab it and shoot before Juno could charge him with a strength and speed that wasn’t his. Juno matched his every step backwards with another one forward, knife twitching in his hand as if the blade itself was trying to worm away from his grasp.

“My dear—” Peter began again, victory and pain swelling in his chest in equal measure when Juno flinched hard enough to nearly drop the knife. “Darling, is that bothering you?”

“Shut up!”

That morning, when he had dragged Juno back to bed twice in demand of affection and nearly made the both of them late for the family meeting, he had lost himself in the great galaxy within Juno’s eye. He had stroked his hair and called him a goddess until Juno accused him of getting too sappy for his own good. Even then, he had pulled Juno in for a tighter embrace until neither of them had any protest that wasn’t also a laugh. The closer hug had eventually relaxed and his gaze returned to Juno’s iris, which had so recently become its favorite place to haunt.

He could have drowned in the depths of that eye. He allowed himself to do so when Juno’s blade sank into his leg. 

It would have been a very good blow, had Nureyev not dodged. It would have killed him within minutes, and Juno would have been free to stalk down the remainder of the crew. No conscience would cling to him, only bloody footprints.

“Dammit,” Juno hissed.

The acid pain screaming through his leg hardly held a candle to the sight of Juno with Nureyev’s blood spattered across his face. Nureyev allowed himself to rest in the crevasse of the twin aches in his chest and thigh for approximately five seconds before he seized Juno’s knife by the handle and feigned a drive into his chest.

That would have been a very good blow too, had he intended it to ever sink home. Instead, Juno staggered backwards in anticipation of a strike, tripping over the edge of the mattress and allowing Nureyev enough time to limp forwards and choke a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.

“Hold still, my love,” Nureyev gritted out, choking down a gasp when Juno’s foot collided with his already injured leg. He seized Juno by the back of the shirt and stifled a thousand apologies as he positioned him to keep both his legs and arms restrained.

“Couldn’t go anywhere if I wanted to,” Juno snapped.

“I’m ensuring that’s true, dear.”

Juno bucked back against the restraints for as long as he could seem to manage, though Nureyev knew well that neither exhaustion or resignation caused his movement to cease. Peter had made a point of studying relentlessly for the heist in every technical sense. He knew everything he had to know and nothing more, aware that the knowledge would sit better at the back of his mind if it was not crammed in with other useless factoids.

As such, he knew nothing of the device choking Juno from the inside out. He could list off the position and name of every security camera off the top of his head, though he could not come up with the first reason that pet names made Juno flinch in agony and the light on his chest blaze red.

He knew two things for certain about the THEIA Soul. First, that it was clever. Second, that it was ruthless. Juno had already maimed his own hand without remorse and seemed ready to do so again the moment Nureyev’s eyes left his bound wrists. 

Juno had not ceased moving because he had ceased attempting to kill Nureyev. He was merely lying in wait, muscles still tensed beneath his shirt and a pair of too-long sweatpants that might have been Peter’s once.

“Juno,” Nureyev finally breathed when he had laid him out to a satisfactorily comfortable position. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Who are you?” He interrupted before Nureyev got the chance to ask anything, though he rolled his eye when the light on his chest flickered red. “I know, just let me ask, dammit.”

Nureyev let himself collapse into a nearby chair, uncaring of the blood weeping from his leg or the pulsing throb of the injury while Juno still stared at him with a stormcloud of fear and anger brewing on his face. 

“To you, or in general?” He asked, words neutral enough to keep his own feelings filed away for the time being.

“Whatever,” Juno huffed. “Neither of you are helping.”

“I’m assuming whichever answer I give you will be blocked by the device’s censor,” Nureyev sighed. “Know that you matter very much to me.”

That didn’t seem to be vague enough for the device, and Juno winced again, wrists bucking fruitlessly against the cuffs.

“Are you trying to kill me, Juno?” Nureyev continued before Juno could spit out a response.

“I’m supposed to.”

“Why?”

Nureyev knew the answer before it crossed Juno’s lips, but it stung nonetheless.

“Where the mind falters, the Soul intercedes.”

Nureyev shook his head, forcing himself back up to his feet. He tried to pretend his leg didn’t scream with every step it took to cross the few feet between the chair and the bed, for it felt far more important to lay a hand on Juno’s cheek. 

“What are you doing?” Juno asked.

His tone was a strange one, alike to a dog with a broken leg gnashing its teeth at the friendly hand trying to comfort it. As much as it sounded like he wanted to back away, and as much as he certainly could, if he had really tried, he didn’t. It seemed as if he hardly realized that his shoulders fell forward and his head leaned into the touch.

When Nureyev’s thumb began to run a cautious line in a little arc atop his cheekbone, that glassy eye, nonetheless lovely for its lack of life, squeezed shut.

“Juno,” Peter began in place of a pet name. He tried to keep the two syllables neutral, for he worried if they sounded too much like worship or adoration or worst of all, a plea, the blinking red censor upon Juno’s chest might keep them from ever reaching his ears. “Please tell me you’re in there.”

“I’m not a different person,” Juno began, words tense, even if his cheek had subconsciously tilted into Nureyev’s touch. “I’m just like I was, but I’m better this way.”

Nureyev swallowed.

“Won’t you come back for me?”

He knew it was hopeless. His thumb walked its familiar path across Juno’s scars anyway while his other hand slinked off towards the nearby nightstand. Juno didn’t seem to notice, eye blown wide and mouth slightly ajar.

This had to be terrifying for him. Nureyev wished he could regret it.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Juno stammered out, even if his words had shed their certainty like a shell. “I’m not gonna do anything for you. You need to be taken care of.”

“I’m going to apologize now before I say this,” Nureyev began slowly as he took a deep breath, eyes squeezed shut for the moment it took to gather himself. “But I love you.”

Juno winced, the blaring red from his chest enough to finally make him recoil. It was exactly the spare second Nureyev needed to retrieve his object of interest from the nightstand.

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“I wanted you to hear it one more time before I did this,” Nureyev replied simply, and pulled the blaster’s trigger.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all!! Just some more content warnings. This stays heavy for a bit
> 
> Content warnings for combat, lack of consciousness, gun violence, blood mention, implied past domestic abuse, betrayal, mind-control, injury, self-hatred, minor gore, restraints mention, death mention, self-destructive behavior

With the shell that used to be Juno Steel limp on the bed, Nureyev finally found himself secure enough to press a kiss to his forehead. He would have tended to every cut and bruise and unnatural bending of his wrist had a river of red not run down his leg and the thick, iron stench of blood not choked around his mouth and nose.

Nureyev kept his hand on the wall as he limped his way past the door, praying for once that Vespa’s overactive paranoia might, this once, fall upon him.

When he was met with only silence, save for the hum of the ship’s engine and the gentle creaking of the oxygen machines, he allowed himself a heavy sigh before he slumped into the nearest kitchen chair. He could call for medical assistance after he had caught his breath, which was proving to be evasive.

Nureyev forced his fingers to dig into the sides of the chair and his eyes to squeeze shut, as if merely grounding himself on a ship hurtling through space would do anything to change the fact that Juno might very well bear another scar, this one at his hand. Even if Juno denied being somewhere within the head of the thing that wore his skin, Peter was sure he had to be. Nureyev had recognized the subconscious touch and the way fear looked across his face.

He tried to file everything away, but the moment Juno’s knife had driven into his leg, it seemed that the overstuffed cabinet had been tipped over.

As such, he had broken a promise he had made to Juno too many times to count. He had whispered, into the top of his head and squeezed into hugs and against Juno’s hairline, that he would never raise a hand against him. He supposed, in a way, he had only done so in self defense. His leg throbbed in sympathy of the thought, but Nureyev pushed its argument aside.

He wanted to file all of this away and insist that Juno was fine, and once his leg was stitched and bandaged, the Soul might be pried from Juno’s chest. Nureyev could make over his wrist and the new burn scar and worship at his wounds as if at the foot of a goddess. He could throw his every debt to the wind and attempt to make up for his treachery with a material apology, and if those attempts fell short, as he was sure they would, he would gladly allow himself to be cast aside like an irritating insect.

A thousand miles away, he heard himself sigh.

Juno could still be saved. He had to force himself to believe it.

However, he would have to make himself believe it later, for a scream and a crash sprang from Juno’s quarters. 

“Ransom!” Juno called from the other room, voice wracked in pain and panic in equal measure. 

For once, Nureyev recognized the exact tambor of his voice, shaking and unsure and exactly how he had remembered. He told himself it had to be another trap, for the THEIA Soul was as clever as it was cruel. However, another shout of pain reached a ragged-nailed hand into his stomach and twisted, uncaring of the squirming organs it tore when it seized him.

“Ransom, what the hell’s happening?” Juno sputtered out again.

Nureyev squeezed his eyes shut. It had to be a trick.

“Honey,” Juno tried, voice falling weak. “What did I do?”

Peter swallowed. Even if he could not file away the evident nature of this ruse, he could shove it to the side for the time being. Whether or not Juno was conscious in that horrible creature tormenting him by wearing his face and pulling the strings of his voice like some inhumane marionette, it was still his wrist that had broken and his chest that bore that horrible, star-shaped burn. Nureyev could resist the pull of the door no more than man can resist the pull of the grave. 

He had resigned himself to attack before the hand even had time to seize around his throat. 

“Scream and you’re dead,” the thing that wore his lover’s face warned.

“Why not kill me already, then?” Nureyev choked out.

The light shining from Juno’s chest blinked and his face fell, almost mirroring the way his expression used to look when he was puzzling something over in his head. However, the moment was brief and contorted, as if in a warped looking glass. Juno shook his head and bared his teeth in a snarl as he reached around his pockets for some weapon or another.

Nureyev had bought himself enough time to attempt to wake somebody else on the ship. Even if it wasn’t much, he kicked out with his good leg and managed to topple over his chair with enough of a crash that at least two pairs of footsteps began clamoring out of bed. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Vespa growled from the nearest room, hair flat on one side and face contorted in a bleary expression as she poked her head out of the door. “Ransom, what the hell?”

“A little help would be warranted,” Nureyev tried to choke in return, which he found was far easier with Juno distracted. His neck snapped towards Vespa so quickly that for a moment, Peter worried it had broken.

“Why the hell are you bleeding?”

“I was stabbed,” Nureyev shot back, able to do so when Juno’s hand dropped away. 

“No shit,” Vespa returned, though her voice had wavered into the realm of uncertainty as Juno turned on his heel and began crossing the dimmed hallway towards her instead. “What the hell happened to Steel?”

“Where the mind falters—” Juno began under his breath.

“Shit.”

“I’m rather inclined to agree,” Nureyev swallowed. 

He lashed out an arm to catch Juno before he could get too close to Vespa, but found arms already weakened by one fight were hardly any good in a second. However, it was enough to stall Juno in his march forward, giving Vespa a chance to escape. She hardly glanced over her shoulder before scurrying backwards towards the kitchen, and more importantly, the knife block. 

Juno rounded on Nureyev. Peter was struck with the realization that he had not removed any of the weapons from Juno’s quarters at the same moment a knife flashed through the darkened hall, glinting its blade like the eyes of a predator flashing in a nighttime wood.

“Vespa,” Nureyev began as evenly as he could manage with his eyes darting around Juno’s wrist and arm and stance to try to guess how he would need to dodge for the oncoming strike. “I need you to wake Rita.”

“What’s the hacker got to do with any of this? Steel’s the one with the knife,” she hissed.

“She might—” Nureyev broke off to parry Juno’s strike with a nearby plate, which screeched against the slashing of the blade like a wounded animal. “Be able to do something to the machine.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Vespa returned when Nureyev shot another glance in her direction. It seemed one of the knives from the block had disappeared in the moment since he last looked. 

“We have to try,” Nureyev protested, words nearly lost as he was forced to duck what would have been a slash to the throat. When Vespa remained frozen, he groaned, partially in the effort of keeping Juno’s arms back and away from him. “Go!”

Vespa didn’t need telling twice. She sprinted down the hallway with muffled steps, though Nureyev assumed that could have been from the pounding of his heart in his ears. It was hard to hear anything with his back pressed against the counter and his leg throbbing and his aching arms trying to keep his partner from killing him. The world seemed to numb itself to all but the splattering of Nureyev’s blood across Juno’s brow, smeared with sweat and combat.

“My dear,” he gritted out upon catching Juno’s blade above his head, though anything else he might have tried to say was sputtered out as a gasp when Juno’s fist collided with his chest. 

“Why won’t you just die already?” Juno growled. “THEIA, take over muscle control.”

“Juno, just listen to me,” Nureyev choked out. “I don’t know how much I can do to persuade you otherwise, but—”

“I don’t care if it’ll hurt me, do it!”

Nureyev wished he could focus on fighting for his life, though throwing a punch was so much more difficult when he knew a bruise in the shape of his own hand would mar his partner’s skin. If Rita’s attempts to hack into the Soul didn’t go as planned, he might never have a chance to brush a thumb over the mark apologetically or dote over Juno. Juno might never again elbow him in the ribs and call him a sap while not-so-secretly loving every moment of attention. 

He tried to get his leadened muscles to move, but he knew that he had lost too much blood to be exerting himself like this. Every time he tried to lift his leg for a step, every joint from hip to ankle threatened to keel over. Even his arms weighed down, trembling under Juno’s force as he desperately tried to keep that blade from inching any closer to his neck.

Juno looked ferocious, and not in the way that made his heart stop or his face break into a proud little smile. It was not the amusing expression of someone complaining about stream selections or even someone staring down the barrel of a blaster. He snarled in such a way that Nureyev would not have been surprised if he decided to forego the knife altogether and tear his throat out with his teeth.

Nureyev felt his arm buckle and tried to prepare for the end as best he could while those three inches between the sharpened edge of the knife and his neck closed.

He swallowed. He took a deep breath. He shut his eyes so he might think of a kinder Juno while the real, present, flesh-and-blood one prepared to kill him.

“I’m coming, Mistah Steel!” Rita all but screeched from down the hallway, her footsteps far easier to hear than Vespa’s. 

Vespa paced behind her, eyes wide and gaze flying from one end of the room to the other in the kind of rapid strategizing that would make a chess master jealous. However, it seemed her job for the time being was to carry the monitor for the computer into which Rita typed her code. 

“Who—” Juno started, his knife having fallen enough for Nureyev to choke out a sputtering breath while Juno turned his head towards Rita.

The second Juno started to twitch away, Peter seized him by the elbow with all the strength he had left, hoping the grasp might, if not distract him, slow him down. It didn’t seem to work, for his eye merely narrowed at the sight of Rita’s fingers flying furiously around the keyboard. Vespa flashed a knife from one of her pockets before he could begin to walk forward, however, sparing Nureyev a moment to crumple back against the counter and try in failed desperation to keep some weight off of his leg.

“I think I got something!” Rita cried, and almost instantly, Juno’s knees buckled.

Even if new logic told Nureyev to do otherwise, old instinct overpowered. His arms wrapped around Juno before he could hit the floor, and when Nureyev’s legs started to give out as well, he too sank onto the tile. 

“My love,” he began, hoping his voice might be soothing. 

The light from Juno’s chest flickered red once or twice, but then returned to a standard, albeit uneasy blue. It switched on and off in strange, beat-long intervals. For some reason, Nureyev couldn’t help but think of the Egg of Purus and those numbers counting down to something strange and horrible that had almost cost him his partner’s life.

“Nureyev,” Juno slurred out, just quiet enough for the two of them to share.

Nureyev felt his face break into a grin he knew was ugly, for he gasped at the same time. However, he didn’t have much need to cover it up with a different expression, for Juno had thrown his arms around his shoulders and squeezed as if letting go of the embrace meant death.

“God, I missed you,” Nureyev heard himself sigh somewhere into Juno’s shoulder. “It’s been less than an hour and it already feels like a year without you, my dear.”

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Juno continued, voice pulling into a wince when Nureyev squeezed a little too tight. 

“Not much,” Nureyev tried and failed to lie.

Juno merely nodded, letting out a long string of deep and shuddering breaths while Nureyev tried to whisper sweet nothings into his hair, finding that for once, his words tripped and tumbled and fell into one another. Fear had done away with his mind and numbed his tongue. Juno didn’t seem to care. He merely tugged him closer and caught his breath and seemed to count his injuries one by one while Nureyev kept him close. 

Like all things heaven-sent, the moment could not last forever. As improbable as it seemed in that moment, Nureyev’s blessings were finite, and he could not count them eternally. Juno twitched as if shocked, and assuming his fingers had brushed over a painful spot, Nureyev loosened his grip.

With their heads closer to a foot away, rather than pressed together, Nureyev tried to look once more into that dark and lovely eye he had fallen in love with, memorizing what it looked like with light behind it. He knew the crew would do everything it could to keep the Soul from activating once again, but he also knew better than to assume life would be kind to the two of them.

After a moment, Juno pursed his lip, brow drawing knit as he looked over Nureyev’s face.

“See something you like, dear?” Nureyev tried to joke, blood loss and the frantic pounding of his heart somehow making way for levity.

“I—” Juno started, though he faltered. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

“Don’t you worry, love, once we get some treatment for that poor wrist of yours, I’ll tell you everything you need to—”

“Ransom!” Vespa cried just as Nureyev saw a knife over his shoulder, lit in red light and reflected in Juno’s eye.

Nureyev didn’t have time to dodge, but Vespa’s blaster was quicker. Mercifully, Juno fell back to the floor on the first shot, though Peter felt his shoulder ripped to the side and two more bolts of ozone sizzling through the air near his head when Vespa sank another pair of shots into Juno’s chest. 

Juno didn’t move, only bucking against the volts once or twice. Nureyev’s shaky breath was yanked out of him by force when Vespa dragged him into a chair, growling out a series of instructions he barely processed. He merely made a mental note to drag himself to the infirmary at a later date. It was hard to focus on much but his buzzing mind, pages and pages of what he thought to have been filed away flying throughout the air like depressing confetti.

“Mistah Ransom?” 

Nureyev blinked. 

“Yes, Rita?” He replied as evenly as he could manage. 

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” she sighed, head hung and hands stuffed in her pockets. “I think they’ve changed these things since I last tried to get inside one of them, so I could only get it to stop working for a little bit.”

“It’s alright.”

“It ain’t though,” she huffed. “It ain’t gonna be alright until Mistah Steel is.”

Nureyev could only manage a nod.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF sorry
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill hurt them MORE BWAHAHAHAHA
> 
> Find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all!! Just a heads up, I know I usually post just about daily when I do multichapters. ive got a busy weekend, so chapters 4 and 5 will be coming out (probably) sunday and monday, so apologies for the delay!! i just want to make sure i get the chance to edit them before they go out :)
> 
> Content warnings for anesthetic, grief/mourning, blood mention, injury, non-consensual sedation, gun violence mention, nausea mention, minor self-destructive behavior, mind-control,

“Pete, darling, are you hearing me?”

Nureyev jumped. It seemed mere moments ago, he was gritting his teeth through the stitches on his leg, though, upon looking down, he found his injury long since bandaged away and bloodless. When he drew his gaze from its fixed spot upon the table, it fell upon Captain Buddy Aurinko, whose years of legendary status had done little to hide the worry upon her face.

“My apologies, Captain,” Nureyev tried to return with a polite smile that was distinctively that of Peter Ransom, rather than himself. “That appears to be the case.”

“I was wondering if you had any objections to the plan as it now stands,” she continued as if nothing had happened. 

Nureyev made a mental note to thank her for that later, as every eye of his crew seemed to crawl upon the back of his neck at his faltering. It was almost worse than the empty chair next to his own. The sight was a cold ache boring into his periphery, even as he fought his own lips, drawing them into a smile as if with fishing hooks and puppet wire.

“The idea of using Juno as a Trojan horse—” he broke to allow himself a sigh, though his face only faltered further when the breath sounded a little too heavy. “It’s not a comfortable thought, I will admit. However, if it’s what it takes to return him to his former state, I suppose I have no option but to oblige.”

“It is seldom what is comfortable that is best,” Jet supplied from the other end of the table.

Nureyev swallowed and nodded. Somewhere, a million miles away, he felt Rita squeeze his arm.

“We’ll get him back, Mistah Thief,” she offered. “Just ‘cause I can’t hack into the thing doesn’t mean it can’t be broken.”

“Exactly so,” Buddy continued. “The remainder of our former plan still stands. While I’ve yet to rearrange every logistic on such short notice, I don’t think we will see much change to the mission’s basic structure. Vespa, Ransom, Rita, and Juno will be on the floor of the factory, while I man the mission from the Carte Blanche and Jet deals with the outer ring of security.”

“Steel’s out for blood,” Vespa interjected before she could continue. “How the hell are we supposed to keep him sedated?”

“Sedated?” Nureyev heard himself choke out.

“What, you want him loose?” Vespa snapped.

“That’s a logistical problem I’ve yet to solve, darling,” Buddy admitted. “For the time being, let us not consider sedation at all. Would I be correct in assuming a restrained Soul-wearer may appear to be someone whose Soul was damaged returning for repairs?”

Nureyev opened his mouth for a moment before he found it within himself to speak.

“It wouldn’t be the first instance of such a thing happening, if I’m remembering my research,” he returned. “If the three of us on the ground are to go forward with the plan to disguise ourselves as security guards, I doubt there would be much issue.”

“Then there’s that matter solved,” Buddy returned with all the composure of one a thousand miles away from any crisis of any kind. However, she still spared a kind glance in Nureyev’s direction.

Nureyev loathed being pitied. Sudden acts of kindness from the crew were blips of comfort at best and patronizing at worst. However, with the woman he had idolized since his childhood passing him a consoling look, he couldn’t help but swallow and nod. He had to force himself to remember that Juno was not only his to value, and in a way, the alms of his crew were the best they could do to cope with his loss for themselves.

Peter shook his head. Juno wasn’t dead, nor was he anywhere close. He might have been restrained in a cold, empty medical bay somewhere, no different than a corpse locked to rot alone in a mausoleum, but that didn’t mean he was gone. He was still alive, and therefore still dangerous. Apparently, he was dangerous enough that Nureyev had lost the argument to lock him in his quarters, rather than the equivalent of a cell.

His stomach turned at the thought. Even if the pilot at the helm of his mind had changed, it was still Juno feeling the ache of a still-healing wrist and the shaky aftereffects of excessive blaster fire. It was still Juno who bore the brunt of the terror at being alone and surrounded by enemies on every side. 

Nureyev only blinked back to himself when Rita squeezed his arm again and nodded towards the Captain.

“—I am aware this was not the intended trajectory of this mission, but if there is any better crew to deal with our current circumstances, I would like to see them,” Buddy was saying. “Now, for the time being, I will be in my office rewiring our logistics. Vespa, I’d like you to ensure Juno hasn’t managed to hurt himself again. Jet and Rita, examine our options for restraints. Pete, take the day.”

Nureyev bristled.

“Captain, I am perfectly capable--”

“I am well aware,” Buddy cut him off. “And before you assume this to be pity, take into account that injury of yours. I want all of my crew in one piece before the second most important mission of our lives.”

“Yes, Captain,” he tried not to huff.

“Well then,” Buddy smiled as if no interjection had been made. “Disperse.”

Nureyev walked a careful tightrope when he stood, pretending the length of his every stride wasn’t calculated to balance both a casual appearance and a quick exit. However, his attempt seemed blunt and sloppy, as if he was disgusted with the chair beneath him. 

He realized his hopes for a seamless escape were dashed when Rita tugged on the sleeve of a shirt that once, months ago, had been Juno’s.

“Mistah Thief?” She called. 

“Yes, Rita?”

“Do you need a hug?”

Nureyev grimaced at the verbalization of a question he tried, in general, not to think about. He felt himself nod before he could even open his mouth to deny it. However, Rita made no move.

“Do you wanna hug?” She pressed.

“Of course,” he almost laughed when he felt her arms seize around his torso.

Juno had a tendency to hug tight when Nureyev was lucky enough to get an embrace. He flew into it, sometimes with a bit of a jump Peter would tease him for, despite the motion only making his heart swell in his chest. Juno hugged like he would never get the chance to do so again. He hugged the way he tried to clutch to all good things in his life, as he was now determined to live it.

However, as biased as Nureyev wanted to be in favor of his partner’s hugs, he had to hand it to Rita.

They weren’t exactly compatible huggers. On the rare occasion he felt bad enough to be dragged into an embrace in a public space, he usually ended up draping his arms and neck and shoulders around hers like some kind of affectionate giraffe with a far higher limb to body ratio in comparison to the object of its affection. However, Rita’s hugs were warm and gentle and patient, paired with the occasional pat to the back or word of affirmation squished into Nureyev’s chest. Her average hug tended to be tight and brief, though, as if by some kind of sixth sense, she seemed to always know how to temper a hug to whatever was exactly needed.

When they parted, Nureyev sighed and nodded his thanks before a crack in his voice could betray his calm as a caricature.

“I think I’m going to pay him a visit,” he said.

“I dunno if that’s a good idea,” Rita winced. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” he nodded. “I hate that he’s alone at the moment.”

“I understand, just—” Rita broke off for a huff. “Don’t get yourself hurt. Or Mistah Steel.”

“I won’t,” Nureyev assured her, feeling suddenly dry of words.

He turned and walked from the room, trying to keep his breaths from falling a little too deep and betraying the great, constricting creature that made his lungs seem to fill with water and his organs twist and writhe at inopportune moments. 

Nureyev might have had more time to ruminate on this creature had his eyes not fixed upon a blank patch of wall and his shoulder collided directly into that of the ship’s doctor.

“Geez, watch where you’re going,” Vespa snapped.

Peter ignored her.

“Is he awake?”

“Do I look dead to you? I had to knock him out to fix his wrist,” she returned. “You’ll know he’s awake when you see the goddamn infirmary on fire.”

“It’s not locked, is it?”

Vespa gritted her teeth, but the look seemed to pass the way a snarling stormcloud arcs across the sky without loosing itself upon the ground below. She shook her head, sighing.

“Just don’t be an idiot about it,” she huffed. “Don’t wake him up, and if he even twitches, you call me, okay?”

“Understood.”

“I’m not redoing your stitches, either, so take your goddamn rest for the night like Buddy said,” she added before he could turn away, catching his shoulder in a grip that felt more firm than aggressive. 

“As the doctor orders,” he tried to smile, though Vespa turned to walk away before he could consider whether or not that small deception had failed.

He only passed two more doors in the hall, one on the left, and one on the right. Regardless, those last few paces towards the infirmary might have been miles. By the time he passed through the threshold, his leg had begun to complain and his eyes withered against the sudden onslaught of night. Even in a ship that was programmed for an automatic darkness throughout what had to have been night, the clinic remained bright, every surface unnervingly white and sterile. 

For as long as Nureyev could have allowed his eyes to rove over the array of tests and machines and medications leering down at him from every cabinet like a faceless audience on the edge of their seats to watch his own tragedy play out, he forced his gaze upon Juno instead. He only hoped Juno was not the title character of that work, for those had a tendency to not survive.

“Hello, Juno,” he said to himself, knowing well his audience was in a far kinder place than he was and therefore, could not hear him. “It’s good to see you well, my love.”

Nureyev took his seat at the edge of Juno’s bed and let out a breath.

Even medicated into a dreamless sleep, he was beautiful. For the first time since that strange posture had fallen across his shoulders, Juno truly looked like himself. He appeared to wear his face the same way, even if Nureyev knew that total relaxation should look the same on anybody. No streaks of pain or confusion marred his expression. Rather, the only marks were his scars, a little map of all the spots Nureyev liked to trace with his eyes and thumb and lips.

If he had his way, he would be worshipping that little treasure map of marks, leading him home. However, if he had his way, Juno would be awake and in charge of his own mind. No blue light would blink from his chest. Nureyev wouldn’t have to wait until Juno had been drugged to sleep to see some semblance of the lady who held his heart in his hand.

Grief and rage, he had learned, had a tendency to share a bed. For as much as that creature within his chest split its face in twain like a snake and sank its chewing, gnawing teeth into whatever organ was the closest and seemed the best to shred into, it also filled his chest with a kind of fire he hadn’t known in years. The beast told him he would die or kill if it meant seeing Juno as himself once more. Nureyev didn’t know how true that was, but his hands twitched like they held the secret ability to bend iron. 

Bending iron wouldn’t do anything to help Juno, however, so he merely reached for a spare object within his pocket that might have been a discarded necklace and ran it over and through his fingers. He needed something tactile that wasn’t a trace upon Juno’s cheek, just to remain grounded on a ship that felt no need to touch the ground. 

When that did little to help him, he found himself standing. He couldn’t remember when or why he had decided to get to his feet, but regardless, decided it best to stay close to Juno. His pacing carved an arc into the floor around his partner’s bed, as if straying from his side would cause him to cave to that imperceivable loneliness Nureyev feared him to suffer. 

As a younger man, Nureyev would have allowed himself to feel sorry for either one of them. He would have spared a glance for his own reflection in the cabinet’s glass and forced down nausea at the sight of himself utterly undone. However, he had lived long enough to know there was only a point in wallowing when nothing could be done at all. He continued to drive his steps into the floor and the mission plan into his mind. Though he doubted his insistence of planning would do much, he knew hardly anything was better than nothing at all. 

He paced far past when his leg began to complain, only pausing when a gasp crossed the threshold between his chest and his lips and he suspected the stitches to have torn. Only when he assured himself that there was no blood did he continue his fruitless march. 

Deep down, Nureyev knew that his location made little difference in his course of action and how much or how little it could do to help Juno. However, every inch farther away from him felt like another traitorous mile, and Peter was unsure of how many of those he could spare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEEHAW MORE SAD NUREYEV HOURS AMIRIGHT FOLKS
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill MAKE NUREYEV SADDER BWAHAHAHAHA
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok y'all hang onto your butts
> 
> Content warnings for violence, gun violence, mind control, very stupid self-sacrificy plans, theia-typical lack of self preservation, injury,

“Juno,” Nureyev began, unsure of whether to be embarrassed or resigned to the pleading in his voice.

“Ransom, if you start this again and he kills us, I’m gonna haunt you for the rest of my death,” Vespa grumbled from over Juno’s opposite shoulder, which she held in a vice grip.

“Well, in that case, he’d be dead too,” Rita considered. “So I guess you guys would just be hanging out.”

“Oh, barf,” Vespa groaned.

“Juno, I want you to know that we aren’t intending to hurt you,” Nureyev pressed nonetheless. “Half the things I wish to say I cannot. I know your Soul will know better than to allow you to trust us, but if you believe anything I say, believe that I mean you no harm.”

“Shut up,” Juno murmured, though his eye was so glazed over that Nureyev didn’t know whether he was talking to the voice of the blinking red light on his chest or Peter himself.

“I just want you to know that if you’re in there, I hope you’re feeling better,” Nureyev continued anyway.

“That’s not how it works, genius,” Vespa hissed. Her eyes flicked up towards a security camera to ensure its great, dark eye was as glassy and lifeless as Juno’s. “He’s not dead, he just doesn’t know who you are.”

“And ‘he’ also doesn’t like when a couple of murdering assholes talk about him like he isn’t there,” Juno snapped. “I don’t know what the hell you’re going on about, but if you’re gonna kill me or whatever, at least have some common decency first.”

“Told you we should’ve gagged him,” Vespa grumbled.

“Don’t worry, boss, I’ll make them be polite,” Rita offered. 

She opened her mouth to continue, but Juno shuddered at the nickname, the light barely peeking through the dark fabric of his security uniform going red. If Nureyev had to guess, the light protested whenever the Soul did, glowing like a tiny shred of New Kinshasa that mocked him from just above Juno’s heart. 

Nureyev filed the thought away and gripped Juno’s shoulder a little tighter as they walked. Even though he knew it to be futile, he prayed that Juno might interpret the touch as comfort, rather than a threat. 

The factory loomed like a castle from an ancient horror novel, every piece of machinery glinting like a dark fang within the maw of the beast they had walked into. With only emergency exit signs and the blinking of fake Souls from their chest for light, the entire hall was cast in an eerie red and blue glow. In a way, the neon colors slithering their way into the dark corners of the factory reminded him of Hyperion City, where nothing remained particularly dark for long. Even the damp and slimy corners of alleyways held a hint of the cyan hue that seemed to permeate from the city itself. 

Nureyev clutched Juno a little closer and continued to walk. 

As they drew ever deeper into the factory, the lights began to wane. Nureyev tried to quell the thumping of his heart with memories of the factory’s floor plan, though the traitorous organ refused to listen to reason. He knew well there weren’t any lights because Rita had turned them off when hacking into the security system at the door. He knew the fading glow of the exit signs was due to the exits growing farther and farther away as they continued to pace forward, at times all but dragging a handcuffed Juno towards the core of the factory. 

“Easy on the shoulder, Jesus Christ,” Juno gritted out.

Only then did Nureyev realize he had been subconsciously clinging to his partner like a lifeline.

“My apologies,” he returned, the words falling limp when he found no pet name to tack at the end of them. He had no poetry for this Juno Steel, even if he loved him beyond sense.

“Save it for the funeral,” Juno huffed.

“Shut it, Steel,” Vespa snapped, voice a little more wiry than usual. 

Even though Nureyev had given up on seeing much more than the blinking spot of blue from Vespa’s collarbone, he could hear that her footsteps had grown tense. She didn’t like the new plan they had been briefed through a day before, that much was clear. 

Her ideas had been, admittedly, cleaner, with less margin for error than accepting a brand new way into the factory. However, Nureyev had protested that it was inhumane to leave Juno behind if it meant treating him like a prisoner, and after Jet suggested that Juno turning off the factory’s Soul system would lead to less collateral damage and a smaller risk of injury than the intended plan of planting explosives and running, any hope of following Vespa’s plan was lost.

Peter all but jumped at the sound of shuffling nearby, eyes going wide when he felt Juno tense.

“Vespa,” Nureyev began after a few more steps through the dark hallways he had memorized well enough to know by touch. He paused to listen for a response, but heard nothing. “What—”

Blaster fire soared down the hallway in a bolt of blue light, making everything in its wake seem jaundiced and gaunt with shadow. Vespa was among that number, fighting to pry Juno’s newly uncuffed hand off of her mouth before the second bolt could sink its teeth into her side and send her tumbling to the floor. 

Juno rounded on Nureyev next, though Peter had the good sense to slip into a shadowed doorway before Juno’s eye, dark and wild in the light of the blaster, could fix upon him.

“Where the hell are you?” Juno snapped.

Nureyev had the sense not to reply.

Juno fired down the hallway again, the bolt setting his gritted jaw alight in the sizzling blue. The circles around his eyes seemed unnaturally deep in the light, while his scars looked strangely flat. For a moment, Nureyev was forced to squint into the sizzling, ozone-scented afterglow of the bolt, trying to recognize the lady who stood in place of Juno Steel. 

Nureyev swallowed when he heard Juno start to move, steps heavy and even and all too unfamiliar for his liking. He didn’t know where Rita was, but he could only assume that bolt of light had illuminated her position. Somewhere down the hall, a much more familiar set of footsteps started up, short and rapid and pounding. Juno’s pace also grew faster, and when Peter heard the distinct sound of Rita’s shocked yell, he knew hiding was not worth the safety it provided him. 

“Boss, slow down!”

Peter somehow heard Juno’s falter over the sound of his own feet and heart, seeming to pound in tandem.

“Shut up!”

Another bolt of light tore its teeth through the air, though it seemed this too was for light. Nureyev could make out Juno’s silhouette tearing around through the dark, his head whipping back and forth in search of a hacker who was nowhere to be seen. Nureyev could barely make out her silhouette underneath a nearby table. He could only pray that Juno did not.

His running seemed to have given him away, however, for Juno’s attention turned towards him. He barely had time to duck before he felt something slice through the air where his head had been mere moments before. 

“Juno, my love, please put down the gun—” 

Another bolt seared past his head.

“THEIA, where the hell’s the light?” Juno snapped, voice high and wavering with stress.

Nureyev managed to stumble over towards the table under which Rita hid before the lights, cruel and white and razor sharp, devoured the room alive. Even the hand in front of his eyes did little to shield him from the rot-green spots that danced in his vision. 

Juno was brought into sight like a shadow come to life, the dark lines of his coat drawn cruel and sharp against the light. Had his face not been contorted with a focused rage that was not his own, Nureyev might have found him beautiful.

“Rita,” Nureyev hissed when Juno’s back had turned in search of her. “I need you to find Vespa. I’ll hold him off.”

She made no noise of recognition, though Peter recognized a shift in fabric that might have been a nod. He took a deep breath, squeezed his hand around his blaster, and shot wide. 

“I’m not done with you,” he called across the room, already striding towards the great, pulsing core of blue light that linked to both Juno’s Soul and the structural support of the factory’s roof.

Just as planned, Juno’s gaze followed him. Contrary to plan, the blaster he had taken from Vespa did so as well. 

The light from Juno’s blaster nearly seemed dim when set against that column of blue, swirling with the dance of mechanisms Nureyev could neither see nor understand. He knew that somewhere behind that blinding glass tube, a system that clicked and whirred so cleverly that even Rita had yet to hack into it resided. He had memorized only what he needed to know to ensure he performed the invasion to maximum accuracy, however, and hadn’t wasted his time on details.

Perhaps, if he had lost a few more hours of sleep or drank another cup of the wretched long-travel coffee that kept him awake and buzzing for long enough that his body creaked and moaned with his every motion, he might have learned enough about the Soul to keep Juno out of its grasp. He knew the thought was useless to the mission, but with Juno’s gaze upon him like wildfire, the drawer to his mental filing cabinet refused to open.

“I’m going to shoot,” Juno warned.

“I’m well aware of that, dearest,” Nureyev tried to reply evenly. His stomach twisted at the blinking of red and the twitch of Juno’s face. “Now, I must ask you, are you aware your weapon is set to stun, or are you attempting to sleep me to death?”

“Shut up,” Juno snapped, flipping the switch and trying to pretend his hands didn’t fumble. “Enough volts will do what they need to do, anyway.”

“Hm,” Nureyev considered, beginning to stride closer to the column at the room’s center.

“Quit walking!” Juno demanded.

Nureyev froze with an eyebrow up.

“Oh, my apologies, dear, I was merely stretching these poor legs of mine,” Nureyev tried to smile. “Utility heels have never been kind to my joints.”

It took all his self control to hold his eyes back from the doorway. His periphery showed a pair of shapes slinking out of the still-dark hallway they had left behind. As much as he wanted to check on Vespa’s condition, the shape that bore her vague resemblance seemed mostly upright. That was enough reassurance for the time being.

“You’re making fun of me,” Juno accused.

“Why would I ever do such a thing, my love?” Nureyev all but scoffed, though he could hear his voice going high and reedy, nearly trembling in response to the pounding of his heart against his throat. 

“You’re not scared—I mean, not as much as you should be,” Juno sputtered. “I’ve got a gun, and—”

“I’m well aware,” Nureyev sighed. “You’re going to kill me, shoot me with that wretched blaster of yours until my poor heart gives out and you’re someday forced to deal with the moral ramifications of your actions.”

Juno huffed.

“Yeah. So shut up and just let me—”

“I was hoping you might keep me alive long enough to ask you one question, though,” Nureyev continued, letting his eyes flicker away only to confirm that Vespa was upright, albeit leaned against a wall while Rita tapped away furiously at her comms.

“Ransom, if you get yourself killed—” Buddy began to warn in his ear.

“I’m not going to,” Nureyev assured her in a hiss. “I have no desire, nor need to throw my life away.”

“Be careful,” Buddy instructed, as stern as he had ever heard.

“As tragic as I’m sure my death would be, I think I’m rather more interested in asking Juno here why he hasn’t shot me yet,” Nureyev pressed. “You’ve had me at gunpoint for quite awhile, dear. Your poor arm is going to get sore if you don’t kill me quickly.”

Juno faltered, the Soul burning so bright against his chest that it was visible through his dark shirt. For just a moment, something distinctly human ripped across his face. His eye fell wide and his mouth fell slack and for a moment, Nureyev nearly recognized him.

“How do you know about the glitch?”

“A glitch then, is it?” Nureyev continued, furiously bottling away the beat his heart had skipped. “Tell me, Juno, what is this glitch like?”

“I—” Juno broke himself off, face snapping into a glare. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Wouldn’t it feel nice to get this off your chest? It’s a rather friendless existence with only you and the Soul,” Nureyev tried to smile kindly, though he was afraid it came off as patronizing, for Juno’s teeth gritted.

“Whatever the hacker did screwed it up, and it’s not blocking everything,” Juno snapped. “Happy?”

“Quite,” Nureyev replied, not even needing to lie.

If Juno had, by some extent, known him, perhaps some part of him had known Nureyev’s attempts at comfort. However, the longer the beat of silence grew, the larger the feeling of an insect crawling up his neck. Perhaps Juno had also known him when he saw the other end of Vespa’s blaster. Perhaps he had even known him when being marched through the halls and fighting against his grasp. Nureyev could only pray that the reaction he was seeing now was fearful obedience to the Soul.

Nureyev shook his head. He had been a fool enough to fall in love with Juno Steel twice, and the person before him was neither of the Juno Steels he had fallen for. His Juno was the little spoon, who stuck his cold hands up Nureyev’s shirt and found six foot sewer rabbits adorable. He cried at the end of the sappy romance movies he pretended to hate and then bitched at anyone who pointed out that fact. 

He swallowed. Even if Juno was driving some of the words and actions and mannerisms of the person before him, the amalgamation of Juno and the Soul was not a person Nureyev knew. However, the admission of the glitch was enough confirmation to know that Juno was still there, somewhere underneath.

“Got something on your mind?” Juno asked, enough to drag Nureyev from his own head.

“Yes, actually,” Nureyev began amicably enough. “I was just wondering why you haven’t killed me.”

“I—” Juno sputtered.

“It would be the right thing to do, of course,” Nureyev shrugged.

“Ransom, what the hell—” Vespa started to growl from the other end of the room, but Rita quickly shushed her.

“I know the Soul is intended to do good. I have blood on my hands, Juno. Wouldn’t killing me be objectively good?” Nureyev offered. “Besides, say, perhaps, my partner was recently compromised by a certain piece of technology I will not name. Perhaps, I desire only what is best for him, and perhaps he desires to kill me. Wouldn’t it be in my best interest to allow him?”

“That doesn’t make any—“

“You see, Juno,” Nureyev pressed, pretending his voice hadn’t risen and begun to shake like an overused muscle. “You want to kill me, and perhaps, I want to die. I don’t see what should be holding you back.”

“Pete, I’m sending Jet in right now,” Buddy snapped through his earpiece. “You had better have an angle here.”

“Oh, no, Captain,” Nureyev smiled. “I’m merely trying to get shot by my former lover, aren’t I, Juno? I would certainly never have a plan of any kind here.”

“Don’t drag me into this!” Juno growled.

“But I’m afraid that it might not be entirely moral to do what human scum like I requested of you,” Nureyev pressed loftily. “So I’m afraid we’re at a crossroads, Juno. You shoot me and do the world a favor, but in doing so, do me a favor as well. You leave me uninjured and dejected, and yet I live to strike again.”

“What the hell are you getting at?” 

“Make the decision, dear, I’m afraid I’m rather impatient,” Nureyev shrugged.

“What—”

“Shoot me,” Nureyev snapped.

All Peter could do was watch his own reflection in Juno’s eye. For a moment, all he could see was a sixteen year old kid with a set jaw and blood splattered across his face. He wore the world atop his skinny, half-starved shoulders and tried to pretend gritting his teeth and filing it away made him strong enough to bear it. He could see that kid grimacing through his first fake passport picture before tearing away from a home he’d never see again. All of it flashed by in a moment, barely broken by Juno’s unplaceable expression. 

Juno fired and Nureyev hit the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to quote Cowboy of the Painted Plains, *sobbing cowboy noises*
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or I'll hurt them WORSE jk idk if i could handle that at this point drink water and take care of yourselves i promise that happy ending is coming
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE DID IT FOLKS!!!!!
> 
> Content warnings for mind-control mention, gun control mention, minor pursuit, blood mention, injury/scarring mention, violence/murder mention

The dodge had been an easy one, though his fall was admittedly sloppy, leaving him winded and his eyes contorted shut. The first things Nureyev processed after his back collided with the base of the column were a pair of hands clutching onto either side of his face.

“Ransom? Honey, please say something,” someone was saying, voice an octave higher than usual and shaking as their hands gripped at his cheeks. “Oh God, Ransom, please—”

“I’m fine,” Nureyev grimaced after a particularly rough shake.

He tried to get a decent look at whoever was doting over him, but his glasses had been knocked askew when he dodged Juno’s shot, and he could make out little more than the swirling mass of blue above him. He groped around for the lenses in vain, stopped only when those same hands pushed them back over the bridge of his nose.

“Hey,” Juno chuckled fondly. “Didn’t hit your head, did you?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Nureyev breathed. “You’re—“

He had barely sputtered the words out before Juno pulled him into a rib-cracking hug. Juno’s hugs always had a manner of fierceness about them, as if he would never get the chance to hold Nureyev again. This embrace in particular was tight and desperate and saw Juno all but flying into him, clinging to him in an olive branch and an apology and a consolation all at once. All Nureyev could do was hold on in return.

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Juno murmured against his shoulder.

“I love you too,” Nureyev smiled.

“I could have killed you,” Juno protested when his head came up once more.

Nureyev’s smile fell when he saw how bright Juno’s eye shone with the tears that the THEIA Soul had not allowed him to shed. Peter tried to raise a hand to wipe them away, but his limbs were thoroughly tangled with those of his partner. When he finally freed one to cup Juno’s face, he could still hardly reach from his half-upright position against the foot of the column.

“You weren’t going to,” Nureyev assured him.

“Are you kidding me?” Juno sputtered. “I literally pulled the trigger. I tried to shoot you—it made me shoot you.”

“You’re not hearing me correctly, dear,” Nureyev returned kindly. “You weren’t going to hit me.”

Juno blinked. 

“What?”

“If what I remembering about the Soul’s function is correct, there usually isn’t a reaction of physical pain along with the emotional attachments it would censor,” Nureyev began to explain, catching his breath as Juno pried away from him just enough to return a still-shaking hand up to the side of his face. “I noticed you had been wincing at pet names, my love.”

“It’s nice to get to hear that again,” Juno admitted, face splitting into a grin when he continued. “Honey.”

Nureyev swallowed down the burning behind his eyes and continued.

“I bargained that with the combined overload of the emotional censor and a moral dilemma, the Soul would begin to slow and glitch if it were already corrupted,” Nureyev continued.

“Doesn’t make it less stupid,” Juno huffed.

“Hey, sapfest, let’s hit the road!” Vespa called before Nureyev could reply. 

“Just a minute!” Juno yelled over his shoulder. “Can you promise me you’ll never do something like that again?”

“Yes, though maybe not at the moment,” Nureyev returned. “I do believe if my plan worked, the central column should be—“

His voice was nearly drowned out by a great creak from above. 

“Breaking.”

When Nureyev managed to draw his gaze away from Juno’s face, it froze upon the beam of light flickering and sputtering like a dying pulse. The glass tubing around it was cracking around the clean, star shaped hole Juno’s blaster had burned into it when missing Nureyev’s head. 

One crack in particular ran higher than the others, its long and spindly fingers grasping towards the ceiling. Nureyev’s eyes rose and his jaw fell in tandem. He didn’t realize Juno had seized him and dove to the side until the tube shattered, teeth of glass sinking their way into the pulsating mass of wires and circuit boards. Nureyev wasn’t even sure if his feet were touching the ground anymore when the monolith of metal and and tubing swayed and then buckled, sinking to its knees before crashing to the ground with a trembling death knell he could feel rattling through Juno. 

“Was that—“

“Holding up the roof!” Rita answered in the form of a screech. 

“Put me down, love, I can run on my own,” Nureyev insisted, tugging on Juno’s sleeve as he began his jog down the hallway. 

“Treat this as an apology,” Juno grimaced his way through a shrug.

“Dear, your lungs—“ Nureyev protested, breaking off with an exasperated huff as the exit signs and twisting hallways and sharp gears of the factory whirred by. They were no clearer on their second appearance. Even without the choking dark, they shook horribly with Juno’s steps and the trembling of the floor. 

“They’ll survive,” Juno brushed him off.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Look who’s talking,” Juno snorted mirthlessly, broken off when Nureyev elbowed him in the rib and jumped back down to his feet. 

Any other jibes Juno had died on his tongue when Nureyev seized him around the wrist and ran. Nureyev knew well that he would be able to keep pace on his own. However, he felt he had the right to be greedy after the week he’d had. He was allowed to take a moment to squeeze Juno’s hand in his and remember the terror and thrill of sprinting down the hallways of the Kanagawa mansion at his side while wearing another’s name and face.

Something behind them crashed and the floor groaned in sympathy. Juno squeezed his hand.

“Almost there,” Nureyev called.

“I have eyes, idiot!” Vespa called back.

“I wasn’t in a coma on the way in,” Juno snorted, though his voice had gone high and nervous with the effort of sprinting. 

“Oh, hush,” Nureyev huffed.

Nureyev couldn’t remember too many of the details from the core of the factory to the outside. He grounded himself only with the occasional squeeze to Juno’s hand, and once, running face-first into Jet, who congratulated him on being alive as brusquely as one nodding a hello to a coworker across the room. 

When he had crammed himself into the back seat of the Ruby 7, all he could do was throw his head back and gasp and choke out a laugh, though the palpable relief was not so much that he missed the factory seeming to crumple altogether in their wake. It seemed as if the single column they had knocked over had caused the entire structure to wither, the roof caving and the walls crumbling like wet paper. 

Nureyev didn’t realize he’d been staring at the factory until he felt his neck grow sore with the angle necessary to see the smoking remnants of that wretched snare that had wired its teeth into Juno’s chest and mind in equal measure.

“Hey,” Juno began softly, seeming to notice his staring as well.

“My love,” Nureyev sighed, though, for once, he couldn’t find a single thing to say. 

When the connection between his mind and tongue seemed to have fizzled for a moment too long, Juno gave his hand a little squeeze and smiled, saying a thousand words between the pair of actions. Juno didn’t seem to feel the need to fill the silence between them, merely resting his head upon Nureyev’s shoulder and letting out a sigh like Atlas freed.

Even on a week that hadn’t felt like five years, Nureyev knew he would never be able to express how easily Juno seemed to read him. He had always considered himself particularly adept at bottling his feelings, even those he could not quite classify. Not everything filed away had to fit in a specific drawer. However, whether it was shock or a residual grief or just exhaustion weighing him down, Juno continued to prove his ability to detect circles around him. Of course, the only person to have caught him red-handed would be the same able to know him better, it seemed, than he could ever know himself.

Juno always seemed to know what to do, even when Nureyev should have been pestering him to take care of himself and doting over his every ache and pain. Even if his touches were light, albeit weighed down with what Nureyev suspected to be an exhaustion twin to his own, they carried a firmness about them. Even the hand brushing sweat-slick hair from Nureyev’s forehead was stubborn and determined. Peter supposed he could have gleaned that much from Juno’s set jaw and the flicker in his eye that seemed ready to tease at any moment, but the tenacity seemed to be so interwoven with every part of him that Nureyev knew he would have known it from touch alone.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on it until now, but he had missed the cohesion about Juno Steel. 

The THEIA Soul didn’t know that Juno wore his emotions as proudly as a new shiner or a split lip. Even if he could take care of it himself, Nureyev would always dote, making sure he was never alone in doing so. If it meant soft kisses and helping him with his makeup, he would be there to supply what was needed. If it meant needing space and an hour or two, he would be there to slip a note under the door bearing a heart and a miserable doodle of a cat, and perhaps, a lipstick kiss like a wax seal upon a love letter, just to remind him he was never alone in spirit. 

“You’re writing a sonnet in your head again, aren’t you?” Juno teased as Nureyev’s eyes got lost somewhere between his hairline and brow.

“Why the accusation, dear?” Nureyev pretended to be annoyed. 

He couldn’t see Juno do so, but he felt him huff out a tiny laugh against his neck. Nureyev merely wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him closer.

“Honey?” Juno asked after a long pause, as if he hadn’t heard Nureyev’s response at all. Peter could practically hear the gears in his head whirring and doubted Juno had made much sense of his question over the sound.

“Yes, dear?” Nureyev asked, if just to celebrate the fact that he could use the word once again.

Juno didn’t shudder, though he did shift, pressing closer to Nureyev. 

“Could I stay with you tonight?” He murmured. His voice was quiet enough that the moment felt like theirs and theirs alone. 

Jet was driving while Rita was trying to pester Vespa into checking herself for a concussion the way Rita’s mother had instructed her. Between their closeness and the general bustle of a car still coming down from an adrenaline high, Nureyev felt as if the moment was clasped in between their met palms.

Regardless, he felt his face falter.

“If it’s too much, I—” Juno started to backtrack.

“No, no, not that, my love,” Nureyev smiled quickly. “Of course you can stay the night.”

Usually, Nureyev would have wanted to at least move the mess around a bit to try and pretend his quarters were slightly less of a nest. However, he supposed this day in particular didn’t classify as usual. Opening the door to his quarters felt like baring his soul in a way he tried not to do often, but with Juno staring up at him with a galaxy in the eye that had so recently been dark and dead, Nureyev wasn’t strong enough to say no.

“Thank you. It means a lot,” Juno continued, dragging Nureyev out of his own head.

“Of course,” Peter smiled. “I’m not cruel enough to make you sleep on the couch.”

“Thanks,” Juno repeated as if the answer had been a great weight off his shoulders.

“Were you worried I would say no, love?”

Juno opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head.

“It’s stupid.”

Nureyev raised an eyebrow, though, upon realizing Juno might need to tilt his head uncomfortably to see, expressed the same sentiment with a kiss to his hairline. If he strained his ear, he could almost hear a pleasant sigh in response.

“It’s not stupid if it matters to you, dear,” Nureyev smiled against the top of his head.

“I just didn’t know if you were gonna wanna spend the night with the guy who just tried to kill you,” Juno explained slowly. “I mean, you’re still bandaged, right?”

“Darling—” Nureyev sputtered.

“You can’t say it wasn’t me,” Juno pressed. “I still have your blood in my nails. I hurt you. Just because it was programming, and hell, just because you want me around doesn’t change that.”

“Juno,” Nureyev huffed. “Do you want to stab me right now?”

“What? No, I—”

“Then it’s settled,” Nureyev all but shrugged. “I have nothing to forgive you for. In fact, I should rather be the one apologizing for such a rash plan. It was high risk, and I shouldn’t have put you in a position in which you might have to cope with doing me harm.”

“Why don’t we have this conversation when my brain’s not half static?” Juno yawned, though he squeezed Nureyev tighter nonetheless.

They did have the conversation later, between a pair of shoulder rubs and a grumbled argument about Nureyev’s taste in streams. Nureyev pretended his eyes didn’t well up when he helped Juno pry that dead hunk of metal from his chest and Juno pretended, for his sake, not to notice. 

When Nureyev finally pulled it free, his fingers clenched around it into a fist before he cast it into the nearest trash can. Juno didn’t stop him, merely letting out a relieved breath when the metal hit the bottom of the can with a percussive thunk. Nureyev only tore his eyes from the still-ringing trash can when Juno reached to pull him into a hug from behind. 

Juno eventually bitched his way into being the little spoon and Nureyev laughed at him and whispered sweet nothings and sweeter promises into his ear until finally, a natural and well-earned sleep overtook him. 

Nureyev knew his own sleep was still a thousand miles away, but for once, his thoughts made decent company. The teenager who tore away from Brahma with his life in a suitcase wouldn’t recognize the man he was today, with a room to call home and a lady to call family. That young man had promised to remain alone and self-reliant, and yet, here he was, grasping to Juno Steel, lives and limbs entwined in equal measure. 

He remembered, at some point before drifting off, pressing a kiss to the top of Juno’s head and relishing in the sleepy little sigh that he got in response. 

He didn’t doubt there would be scars of all kinds from the event. He didn’t doubt those scars would mar them both. However, those were things to be dealt with in time. 

For now, he held the same Juno Steel he had known a week prior close and breathed easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY!!!! i promised a happy ending didnt i?
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or i'll find a way to hurt them worse
> 
> Find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!=

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAa
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill hurt them MORE BWAHAHAHAHA
> 
> Check out my tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or my twitter @withane22 !!


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